democracynow.org
Stories:
Part 2: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Segregation, Housing Discrimination and “The Case for Reparations”
We air part two of our interview with famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates about his cover article in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations,” in which he exposes how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally backed housing policy have systematically robbed African Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing inter-generational wealth. “It puts a lie to the myth that African Americans who act right, who are respectable, are somehow therefore immune to the plunder that is symptomatic of white supremacy in this country,” Coates says. “It does not matter. There’s no bettering yourself that will get you out of this.”Click here to watch part one of this interview.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with the second part of our interview with famed essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates talking about his explosive new essay called, "The Case for Reparations". The 16,000 word article is the cover story for the June issue of The Atlantic magazine and is being credited for rekindling a national discussion on reparations for American slavery and for institutional racism.
AMY GOODMAN: In the piece, Ta-Nehisi Coates exposes how slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and federally backed housing policy systematically robbed African-Americans of their possessions and prevented them from accruing intergenerational wealth. Much of it focuses on predatory lending schemes that bilked potential African-American homeowners. Juan González interviewed Ta-Nehisi Coates on Thursday. For the first part of our conversation, go to democracynow.org. This is part two.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: One of the things you mentioned in that article, when people speak about racism or white supremacy in this country, they are usually talking about individual acts or, for instance, Donald Sterling and the Los Angeles Clippers, his remarks have gotten widespread attention. But they don’t want to talk about any institutional manifestations of racism. You write "it is very hard to except white supremacy as a structure erected by actual people as a choice, as an interest, as opposed to a momentary bout of insanity."
TA-NEHISI COATES: Right, right, right. Again, this goes back to one of the things I was saying earlier. We have this — our notion of racism, as you mentioned is, you know, Donald Sterling, and Clive Bundy, somebody that says something that seems intemperate. We think of racism as a matter of the heart. This is why is becomes so explosive, say today, to call somebody "racist," because you basically are calling them a child molester or something like that. But, the statements of individuals are largely more symptomatic than they are the source of anything. The thing people have to remember is there is nothing natural about racism as it exists in America. We know this historically. We can look at 1619 when Africans first came here and how early African slaves intermixed pretty discriminately with indentured white servants. You can look at Bacon’s rebellion where you see black people and poor white people actually allying in a rebellion. One hundred years later for some reason, that would not happen. We can see why that would not happen if you look at the actual laws. What we call black in America today is a matter of laws, laws that were actually passed to enforce slavery. What we call black here today is not what folks call black in Brazil, is not what, you know, even what people would call black in Louisiana 100 years ago. Things change. Race is an actual manifestation of a done thing and that has profound, profound consequences. And I think if we can focus on that, if we can understand it as a structural thing, as a matter of actual policies as opposed to some intemperate remarks somebody made as a result of those policies. Then I think we would be in a much better place.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the people you write about is Ethel Weatherspoon. She has owned her own home in the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago for more than half a century. In a video accompanying your piece, Ethel Weatherspoon explains how she bought her house on contract.
ETHEL WEATHERSPOON: I moved in his house in 1957. It was mostly a white area. When they said that the niggers was coming. They did not say black, they said the niggers was coming. And they start, just start moving away. Mostly everyone that was black they had been sold a contract. If you missed a payment in three months, they could take your property back. No lawyer, no nothing could help you. That was it.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Ethel Weatherspoon and this — what you talk about as institutional racism, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and what happens in housing.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Gladly. Everybody asks me about Mr. Ross, I’m so happy to be able to talk about Mrs. Weatherspoon. I wanted to include her story because, again, when we talk about African-Americans who live in neighborhoods like North Lawndale, there’s a kind of traditional narrative out there; these folks have fallen into cultural pathologies, if they would just get married and act right, everything would be OK. Well, Mrs. Weatherspoon was married for many, many years, had kids, her kids are doing well. She is a homeowner, is a very, very responsible citizen of Chicago, and yet she lives in North Lawndale, a neighborhood that just in terms of any socioeconomic indicators, on the wrong end in terms of Chicago. One of the most provocative things about her story and how she came up — just how much work she put in, and the fact that she was able to hold on to her home in that situation, is it really puts a lie to the myth that African-Americans who act right, who are respectable, you know, are somehow therefore immune to the plunder that is symptomatic of white supremacy in this country. It does not matter. There is no bettering yourself that will get you out of this. There is no sort of immunity for black people who get married or black people who go to church every Sunday or black people who hold jobs. The people I profile in this article or some of the most hard-working Americans that you would ever want to meet, and yet they were exploited anyway.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you, throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, the federal government basically helped to finance the main wealth gathering of most Americans through FHA mortgages and to build the suburbs, really, of most American cities. Talk about that as a federal policy that — and why it basically did not work in terms of African-Americans.
TA-NEHISI COATES: One of the problems that we have — and I think this goes beyond a discussion of white supremacy and racism, but the myth of rugged individualism in this country as though people just walked out to the suburbs supplanted stakes and then the suburbs just sort of bloomed from nowhere. The suburbs are federal policy. In the 1930’s and the 1940’s, we set up the FHA, we set up the Home Owners Loan Corporation. We set up specific bureaus to make our communities look the way they look. In 1995, I took a trip to Chicago, my first time as an adult and I was writing down the Dan Ryan Expressway, and at that time there was the longest row of projects, public housing I think in North America along that corridor. And it struck me as a moral disaster. What I did not understand at that time was that this was actually planned, that African-Americans had been cut out of any sort of legitimate housing program during the 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s. Instead we got was public housing built on a segregated basis at that point — in that particular case, on the Southside of Chicago. There’s no way to understand housing as it exists today without federal policy. Black people, as was the thinking at the time, could not be responsible home-loaners. The FHA literally drew up the redlining map and then basically distributed — I’m sorry, the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation actually did it, and then distributed to banks who used that as policy to determine how they would lend and who they would lend to. The racism in the system was pervasive and total. The fact that African-Americans have been cut out of it is not shocking if you understand what the country was in the 1930’s and the 1940’s. And this redounds throughout generations. As we know, homes in America are how people build wealth, largely. And if you cut black people out of that opportunity, a lot is explained about what the African-American community looks like today.
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, you write in this remarkable piece, "The Case for Reparations," when progressive wish to express their disappointment with Barack Obama, they point to the accomplishments of Franklin roosevelt. But these progressives rarely note that Roosevelt’s new deal, much like the democracy that produced it, rested on the foundation of Jim Crow." Talk about what you mean. You have been talking about housing, but also Social Security, G.I. benefits, and how they have failed African-Americans.
TA-NEHISI COATES: The sad truth — my politics are pretty obvious, like any other progressive, any other liberal for years, I was particularly proud of the Roosevelt era and would often look act nostalgically at the G.I. Bill, Social security, basically the erection of the safety net in America. But, when you look at actually how that was built, Ira Katznelson, a professor of Columbia’s done great work in his book "When Affirmative Action Was White," and his newest book, "Fear Itself." And what he basically shows is the way that was made possible was an alliance between Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats had no problem with erecting a social safety net as long as it could be one that would benefit whites and would not upset white supremacy or the Southern way of life, as they put it on at the time. And Democrats in the North wanting a deal, some of them racist and some of them not, were willing to go along with that, regrettably. Social Security, I believe, as it was written at the time, you could not just outright say, black people can’t get this. What they did was excluded domestic workers and agricultural workers. In the south, that was a broad swath of African-Americans. So, when Social Security is first passed, it excludes something like 65% of all African-Americans in the country, 80% in the South. And policy was designed in such a way, it was filtered to the state level. In the case of G.I. Bill, where African-Americans in the south if you’re a veteran, would then have to go deal with some southern veteran affairs officer. You can just imagine about how well you would fare in that case.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the role of the contemporary banks. We now know from a lot of reports that have come out recently that one of the biggest banks in the country, Wells Fargo, had in emerging markets unit that specifically targeted black churches and the black communities for predatory loans. But now as the government is trying to make settlements with a lot of these banks, there doesn’t seem to be a targeted compensation to those who were most victimized. Just a general sense that the banks will pay a certain amount of money to escape prosecution.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Right, right, right. There was the class-action which I think does some of that, but my greater concern is that the root problem of this, which is segregation — Wells Fargo had a marketing incentive to do what they did. The marketing incentive was created by us many years ago and is here even today. It is not a mistake. They were able to get the memos. And in the memos you see them describing their customers as mud people, black people as mud people, describing the loans as ghetto loans. The important thing to remember about is this, and this is proven in the research, even after you balance for credit worthiness, even after you balance for income, even after you balance for wealth, African-Americans were still targeted. It was not just a matter of them being poor, being working-class or whatever and therefore being that — it was specifically because they were black. Again, that makes sense if you understand segregation and you have this population of people right here. Basically, our housing policies of the past made the plunder of today efficient. It made it efficient to go to black communities and plunder black communities through these predatory loans. There is no policy even today to break up that segregation to make it inefficient. There is no new policy to guarantee that 20 years from now this won’t happen again. I think that is really where the call for reparations comes in. What are we going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates, you write that a black family that may make $100,000 typically lives in a neighborhood of white families taking $30,000.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah, and I think many times pundits, intellectuals, writers will try to do things like they’ll look at a black family and they’ll try to control for income. Or even often control for wealth, and there’s a great deal of sociology going on right now that demonstrates what is called the neighborhood effect. That means it doesn’t make sense to actually look at an African-American family or white family in isolation. People are largely reflect the communities they live in. Because of our housing policies, because of our housing policies, increasing income for African-Americans, just, that isn’t enough. You have to be able to then take that income and invest it somewhere, in a house in this case, and actually hope to have some return. African-Americans are uniquely trapped in particular neighborhoods in this country. Those neighborhoods tend to be neighborhoods that are higher poverty. When you look at their income and compare it to white income and therefore suffer all the ills that impoverished neighborhoods suffer. When see a stat like that, you know, a family making $100,000 basically living in a neighborhood condition of $30,000, it really clarifies a lot.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you talk about how reparations might work in practical terms here in the United States?
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yeah, there are many schemes out there right now. The most obvious one is just mail a check to Africans. Just calculate a number and divide by the number of African-Americans, mail a check. That is often joked about. I’m not prepared to dismiss that out of hand. Maybe that will be the right thing. Professor Charles Ogletree up at Harvard envisions something a little more systemic and a little bit more widespread and that is a reinvigoration of the idea of erecting a stronger social safety net. Policies that may not even necessarily just benefit African-Americans, but policies that may disproportionately, but policies that may affect African-Americans, but with a strong social social justice, a strong antiracism rhetoric attached to it. I think, should we ever live in a world where there were reparations, what you would likely see is some sort of mixed of the two. You likely would see some sort of targeted policy at African-Americans along with some broader policies also. But I think the rhetorical point of understanding that this is part of an ancient debt that we have incurred, is really, really important. Just one brief example if I may, president Obama, when people wanted to criticize the Affordable Care Act, they would often say, this is reparations, this is reparations, and liberals were often caught in this cross and say, no, no, no, this isn’t for black people, this will benefit everybody. In a just world we would say, yes, this does disproportionately benefit black people, and that is a very, very good thing. Because for most of our history, we have disproportionately injured black people, and our policies should be structured in such a way that take that into account.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Ta-Nehisi, in the first part of our conversation when you explained the part of your piece in the case reparations about how Germany has given reparations to Israel, it is not only the state of Israel. Germany had to make reparations, billions of dollars, to Holocaust survivors individually wherever they lived, and there were many in the United States. But I wanted to ask you, you have not always been for reparations. What changed your mind? And talk about what surprised you most in doing this massive piece that you did for the Atlantic.
TA-NEHISI COATES: Two things changed my mind. The biggest thing is just understanding more. That is the first thing. I guess that covers both things. The first thing is to understand America isn’t a country that just had a little bit of slavery. Slavery is not, say ancillary to understanding America. You actually can’t understand American history without understanding slavery. And that really became clarified for me as I began to do my research and do my understanding. And just to clarify what I mean by that, in 1860 when we launch into the deadliest war in our history, 60% of our profits are derived from cotton. Slaves as a whole, and I hate to talk about it that way, but slaves as a whole comprised the largest individual particular asset in all of America at the time of the Civil War. The region with the largest per capita millionaires in the country was the Mississippi Valley. When you talk about a source of wealth or that level, you’re talking about a big, big, big, big piece of American history and a big, big piece of how we became America. So, understanding that slavery was itself not ancillary, but central to understanding what America was. And then understanding what policies we passed in the 100 years after that that reflected goal, that continue to injure African-Americans. A lot of things became clear to me.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your judgment, at this stage in the presidency of Barack Obama, first African-American president, his willingness to tackle some of these issues, the ramifications of which and the theory behind which he clearly understands?
TA-NEHISI COATES: Yes, yes, yes, yes. It is funny, I published the pitch when I was first putting this together, and at the time I said, well maybe Barack Obama should say something about this. I’ve since changed my mind. I don’t think he should say absolutely anything about it. I think the president is in a very unique position as the first African-American president. I think that shrinks the amount of things he can can’t say. That does not mean that one should not be critical. I definitely have been critical. I think some of his rhetoric around culture and the cultural policy are deeply, deeply misguided and erroneous and wrong. Having said that, it is not my expectation that President Obama will come out tomorrow in support of reparations. And I don’t even think that is the way it should work. My hope, if anything, my hope would be that, A, other writers will take this on and they won’t just look at it from a housing perspective, my hope is that they’ll look at it from a criminal justice perspective, which is another way think this article could be written, from a from an education perspective, from a health care. There are all sorts of ways you can look at the dynamic of reparations. And then after that, then we will have some sort of groundswell in the country that will build of a movement. Politicians respond to pressure. I think that is what needs to happen. This is all along, long fight , not something that is supposed to be won next year even before Barack Obama leaves office.
AMY GOODMAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates. We’ll link to the cover story for The Atlantic called "The Case for Reparations", as well as part one of our interview with him at democracynow.org.
Obama Continues Record Deportations, Delays Immigration Reforms In Order to Court Republicans
President Obama announced this week that he is delaying a review of his administration’s controversial deportation practices until after the summer, after earlier ordering Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to look into ways he could take executive action to scale back deportations after civil rights groups dubbed him the "deporter-in-chief." But during a hearing on immigration policy Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia made it clear that they remain highly skeptical of negotiating with the president. Immigration rights groups continue to express frustration over the lack of political traction on comprehensive immigration reform. “Our community is angry and we are going to channel that anger in the most constructive way possible,” says our guest Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which has engaged in civil disobedience to pressure Obama to immediately stop deportations.Image Credit: Juliosalgado.com
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This week president Obama announced he is delaying a review of his administration’s controversial deportation practices until after the summer. Obama had ordered Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to look into ways he could take executive action to scale back deportations after civil rights groups dubbed him the reporter in chief. As Congress remains stalled on passing reforms, advocates have called on the president to limit the removal of undocumented immigrants who do not have criminal records, who account for some two thirds of the 2 million people he has deported.
AMY GOODMAN: The White House now says it wants to put off any potential reforms in order to avoid angering House Republicans and dooming chances of passage of the comprehensive immigration reform bill this year. But during a hearing on immigration policy Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, made it clear that they remain highly skeptical of negotiating with the president.
BOB GOODLATTE: The Obama administration has taken unprecedented and most likely unconstitutional steps in order to shut down the enforcement of our immigration laws for millions of unlawful and criminal aliens not considered high enough "priorities." Unfortunately, we can only expect DHS’s effort to evade its immigration law responsibilities to escalate. President Obama has asked Secretary Johnson to perform an inventory of the department’s current enforcement practices to see how it can conduct them more humanely. These are simply codewords for further ratcheting down enforcement of our immigration laws.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Goodlatte’s remarks came as Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified before the committee, just two days after the White House said it would delay its review of deportation policy. Johnson said he remained committed to the effort, when questioned by representative Senator John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan.
JOHN CONYERS: As you complete your review of enforcement practices, will you take a close hard look at who is being targeted to make sure these people who have only immigration status violations are not made priorities?
JEH JOHNSON: Yes. The concept of prosecutorial discretion is one that has been around for a long time in the criminal justice context and this context. And I think with the resources we have from Congress, we have to continually reevaluate how best to prioritize who we enforce the laws against. So that would be part of my objective.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: All of this comes as overwhelmed border authorities in South Texas set up an emergency shelter at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio to house about 1000 children who were detained while migrating alone. Johnson said the crisis had "zoomed to the top of my agenda" after he visited a border control station where young children were being held, one of whom was just three years old.
AMY GOODMAN: For more we’re joined in our New York studio by Pablo Alvarado, Director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, which has called on Obama to take executive action to immediately stop deportations. He was just on capital Hill Thursday in meetings with lawmakers. Welcome back to Democracy Now! So about this news at the Obama administration, for fear of antagonizing Republicans, will not change the policy for now, though they are reviewing it?
PABLO ALVARADO: Our community is very angry. We believe that it doesn’t make sense to continue deporting our community for the next three months because of the belief that by doing that we will get immigration reform done. That is the logic of the last five — 14 years and it has not worked out at all. So, a new approach needs to be tried here. So, our community is angry and we’re going to channel that anger in the most constructive way possible.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you say the most constructive way possible, the problem is, we are now into, what has it been, eight years since the 2006 immigration protest when this issue first really hit the national consciousness? There seems to be very little progress. The president is arguing, let’s not alienate Republicans any further, let’s wait a little longer. But it doesn’t seem that much gets accomplished by this slow pace of pressure. It almost seems to me you need some kind of crisis created in the country before both sides will actually deal with immigration reform.
PABLO ALVARADO: I was in Washington, D.C. for the last three days, speaking with some of the legislators and some of the immigrant rights groups that are heavily involved in the fight for immigration reform, and none of those folks could actually tell me that the window of opportunity that exists — that supposedly exists this summer is real or fictitious. None of them could tell us that something is actually going to happen. But what we know for sure is in the middle of all of this uncertainty, the president can actually act now. So, obviously, immigrant rights activists and people who are being harmed by the system are going to escalate their direct action in the coming months.
AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, The New York Times ran an editorial headlined "Adding Delay to Immigration Failure" saying "There is something ridiculous about the president’s fear of halting a legislative process that has been motionless for nearly a year. And it’s infuriating for him to insist that doing more through executive action to protect families and reset the system’s warped priorities — as he did in halting the deportations of thousands of young people brought to the country as children — is impossible or too politically dangerous." The New York Times’ take is quite different from the SEIU’s position. Earlier this week, the union supported Obama’s delay in order to "give the house leadership all of the space they may need to bring legislation to the floor for a vote." They added, if the house failed to vote, "the administration will have and obligation to use whatever tools are at its disposal under the law to prevent the tragic breakups and economic destruction that’s been become daily norm." The SEIU went on to say, "We sincerely hope it will not come to that, because any such administrative reforms must necessarily be partial and temporary compared with what legislation can accomplish." Respond to that.
PABLO ALVARADO: Well, I don’t know who persuaded these organizations to take this stand. We obviously disagree. We believe that it is politically wrong and in terms of the law as well, we believe the president can act now.
AMY GOODMAN: When the president enacted DACA, you know, the young people being able to stay, wasn’t there enormous Republican backlash?
PABLO ALVARADO: Not at all. On the contrary. When he acted, it benefited him politically and he helped a lot of people. So, essentially asking him to use the same authority to expand DACA to the extent possible, we’re asking him to eliminate the security program that has caused so much suffering in our community. We are less safe in our neighborhoods because of these programs. So, these are things that the president can do and must do now. Why do we need to wait for three months? That is thousands of people that are going to be taken away from their loved ones and deported. It doesn’t make sense anymore.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Isn’t what is happening now that, again, is it is a replay of the divisions that occurred within the immigration reform movement back in 2006 when the national organizations in Washington said don’t create more problems, let’s see if we can get a little further on ahead. And the grassroots organizations said, we can’t wait anymore, we are the ones who are actually experiencing the suffering.
PABLO ALVARADO: This time around, it is very different, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In what way?
PABLO ALVARADO: In the sense that our community is a lot more sophisticated. To the extent that there is a division, it’s coming from the top down. From the bottom up, we are very clear that deportations must stop at this moment. So, we don’t know the motivations of the organizations that sign on to this letter. I’m not going to josh them. But I know that they are wrong politically and on the law. I strongly believe that the next letter they’re going to be writing is to ask the president to intervene. I predict that that is what is going to happen.
AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned secure communities. During Thursday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was asked about calls to end the controversial Secure Communities program. This was his response.
JEH JOHNSON: I don’t believe we should scrap Secure Communities. I believe, given the reality of where we are with this program in this country, that we need a fresh start. We have mayors and governors signing executive orders and passing laws that limit our ability to effectively carry out this program. And I think the goal of the program is a very worthy one that needs to continue. But it has gotten off to bad messaging, misunderstanding in state and local communities about exactly what it is — some people think it is a surveillance program. But, you are right, it is sharing fingerprints between one federal agency and another. And I think with clearer guidance and clearer understandings by mayors and governors, commissioners and sheriffs of what our priorities are, we can go a long way in improving the administration of this program.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Pablo Alvarado, your response? And for people who aren’t clear what Secure Communities is?
PABLO ALVARADO: The Secure Communities program, is a program, it’s not a law. And it essentially mandates localities to collaborate with federal agents. Local police collaborating with federal agents. I don’t think that Secretary Johnson is actually reading the news lately because this type of policing as collusion has actually been declared unconstitutional. And more mayors and chief of police are coming out and saying, we are not going to comply with these detainer policies. To the extent that things are changing, they are changing on the ground because people were being harmed by the system are fighting back at the local level. This is only going to escalate in the coming months. This is precisely the outcome of their inaction. We are going to see more of their stuff. Secure Communities, the intention was to make our neighborhoods a lot safer. It hasn’t happened. It is the other way around. People don’t feel that they can actually call the police for protection. So no one wants to live in neighborhoods where 46% of Latinos and 70% of the undocumented doesn’t want to call the police. No one wants to live in neighborhoods like that. This program was imposed with lies and deceptions [Unintelligible] and it has got to end, it cannot be rebooted. And we’re going to fight to make sure that it ends.
AMY GOODMAN: Pablo Alvarado, thank you so much for being with us, Director of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network. When we come back, we will be joined by Aviva Chomsky to talk about the history of immigration, with — talking about her new book called, "Undocumented." Stay with us.
“How Immigration Became Illegal”: Aviva Chomsky on U.S. Exploitation of Migrant Workers
We are joined by Aviva Chomsky, whose new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal” details how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that have long been granted to European immigrants. She also draws parallels between the immigration laws now in place that criminalize migrants, and the caste system that has oppressed African Americans, as described by Prof. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow." Chomsky’s previous book on this topic is "They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths about Immigration." She is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts.TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to a new book that documents how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that has long been granted to European immigrants. The book is by Aviva Chomsky, and it’s called, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal."
AMY GOODMAN: Chomsky’s previous book on this topic is, "'They Take Our Jobs!' and 20 Other Myths About Immigration." She is Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. In case you’re wondering, yes, she’s the eldest daughter of Professor Noam Chomsky. She is joining us from Boston. Professor Chomsky, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about this history that is not very well understood, I think, in this country.
AVIVA CHOMSKY: Right, I agree that it is not very well understood. We often hear people saying this is a country of immigrants, as if that explains something. But, I think when we say this is a country of immigrants, we are actually hiding as much as we are explaining. OK, let me try to explain that. So this is a country of immigrants. People have in mind Ellis Island, they have in mind the European immigrants, they have in mind the people who, under U.S. law have been considered immigrants since really the founding of the country. We need to think about how immigration and citizenship work together. That is those who the law has considered immigrants are those who were considered to be potential citizens.
Now, citizenship law in the U.S. restricted citizenship to white people until the Civil War. After the Civil War, citizenship was restricted to white people and people of African descent. So those who were immigrants, so prior to the Civil War, many people who were not white were brought into the country, were physically present in the country, came into the country on their own, were conquered and incorporated into the country, but they could not be citizens. And they were not considered immigrants when they entered the country. The only ones who were were considered immigrants were the Europeans. After the Civil War, not only is citizenship extended to people of African descent, none of whom are immigrating to the United States of coming to the United States in the aftermath of centuries of slavery and, finally, the war and abolition of slavery, but other people, for example, the Chinese, who are coming into the country, are still not eligible for citizenship. In fact, they’re legally defined as racially ineligible to citizenship.
And what really makes things complicated for immigration law is when citizenship by birth is created with the 14th amendment in 1868, also in the aftermath of the Civil War, because it creates this sort of logical impossibility that people who have been declared racially ineligible for citizenship, people who were not considered immigrants even when they come to the country, they’re considered workers but not immigrants, that they can then obtain access to citizenship by birth. It is this logical impossibility of people who are legally defined as racially ineligible to citizenship and then because of being physically present, able to obtain immigrant citizenship by birth, that leads Congress to start setting up restrictions on immigration. And restrictions against people who are considered to be racially ineligible to citizenship, that is the Chinese and eventually all Asians, and Asia is very broadly defined under this law.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Aviva Chomsky, I wanted to ask you, in your introduction, you refer to a phrase that I’ve heard often from readers and callers, usually angry readers and callers to me at the Daily News, when they say, Mr. Gonzalez, what part of illegal don’t you understand? You raise the point that the concept of the illegality in terms of immigration is actually a relatively new term in American history, and it’s also been changed over time. And it’s use has become — has always been racialized. Could you talk about that?
AVIVA CHOMSKY: Yes, absolutely. I think it is part of the same system I was describing before that restricted immigration to white people and citizenship to white people and then started to cut off immigration. But as immigration started to be restricted for groups, including Asians and eventually even for Europeans who were considered to be inferior Europeans, like southern and eastern Europeans in the 1920s, Mexican border crossing was never restricted. Mexican border crossing was never restricted because Mexican labor was so utterly necessary in the southwest of the United States and because Mexicans were not considered immigrants, so therefore, their immigration did not have to be restricted. They were considered to be workers, legally discriminated against for what were considered racial grounds, that is they were so-called "Mexican." That was perfectly legal. To deprive them of citizenship was perfectly legal. And, the system worked from the perspective of maintaining United States is a white country because unlike the Asians, Mexican migration was generally circular migration. That is, Mexicans came, worked for a season or year or a couple of years, and returned to Mexico. So the history of border migrations for 150 years was one of circular migrations that were basically either completely unregulated or, for example during 1942 and 1964, extended through 1967, government-sponsored through the Bracero program, but migrations that denied citizenship and denied rights to the Mexicans who were in the country.
So the creation of illegality and starting to call this migration illegal happens in 1965, really, when Mexican migration is, for the first time, considered to be immigration and is legally restricted, that is, a quota is put on Mexican migration as it is on every country of the world. And in a situation where tens of thousands of Mexicans have been crossing the border legally and recruited and sometimes even coerced, every year, all of a sudden, this is made illegal. It is not stopped, but it is given a different name. Instead of calling it the Bracero program, it is called illegal migration. It is still just as necessary to the economy of the Southwest, it’s still encouraged by all different sectors, but the discrimination against these workers is now justified by this introduction of this new terminology and status of the illegality. I hope I explained that, it’s a little complicated.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And your point is that once this new illegality for Mexican immigration begins post-1965, that then begins the criminalization of Mexicans as migrants. And you draw the parallel in your book with Michelle Alexander’s book on mass incarceration and how the racialization that occurs — and describes in her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age of Colorblindness." This is Alexander speaking on Democracy Now!
MICHELLE ALEXANDER: I think we have become blind in this country to the ways in which we have managed to reinvent a caste-like system here in the United States, one that functions in a manner that is as oppressive in many respects as the one that existed in South Africa under apartheid and that existed under Jim Crow here in the United States. Although our rules and laws are now officially colorblind, they operate to discriminate in a grossly disproportionate fashion through the War On Drugs and the get tough movement, millions of poor people — overwhelmingly poor people of color, have been swept into our nation’s prisons and jails, branded criminals and felons, primarily for nonviolent and drug-related crimes. The very source of crimes that occur with roughly equal frequency in middle-class white neighborhoods and on college campuses, but go largely ignored. Branded criminal felons and the are ushered into a permanent second class status where they’re stripped of their many rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement like the right to vote, the right to serve on juries and the right to be free, of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, Aviva Chomsky, you draw similar parallels in terms of the criminalization of Mexicans. Could you elaborate?
AVIVA CHOMSKY: Yeah, when you listen to Michelle Alexander list the legal disabilities that come with a criminal record, they look exactly like the legal disabilities that come to Mexicans because of their illegal status. That is, they can’t vote, they can’t serve on juries, they aren’t eligible for public benefits, they’re legally prohibited from working. When I read Michelle Alexander’s book and heard her speak about this I thought, there is a real parallel here. One part of the parallel is that the dismantling of the Jim Crow regime as a result of popular mobilization and the civil rights movement goes along with a dismantling of the regime of legalized discrimination against Mexicans embodied in the Bracero program. That is the idea that we can actually step up and say outright that this is what we are doing, we are going to bring in Mexican workers and discriminate against them just because they’re Mexicans. You can’t do that anymore in the climate of the 1960’s. And yet another idea of hers that I find so compelling is this idea of status as a caste, and the creation of a new status for these Mexican workers that justifies mistreatment by criminalization, rather than overtly by race like it is OK to discriminate against them just because they are Mexican. Now we won’t call it that, now we’re going to turn them into criminals and then we can justify discrimination on the basis of the fact that we’re calling them criminals.
AMY GOODMAN: Aviva Chomsky, as we wrap up, you have written several books now on immigration. You wrote, "'They Take Our Jobs!' and 20 Other Myths About Immigration," and of course your new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal." What surprised you most in your research for this book?
AVIVA CHOMSKY: I think what surprised me most happened before I knew I was writing the book, but it’s one of the things that led me to write the book. I had been working with immigrants, including many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. really since the early 1980’s. But I had never been to the border. And some of my friends who worked with border organizations down in Arizona kept saying, you can’t keep talking about immigration without coming to the border. And finally in 2010, I took a group of students on a trip with No More Deaths, where we worked on the Mexican side of the border taking testimonies from people who had been deported, people who had mostly been picked up in the desert and were dumped in Nogales Sonora on the Mexican side of the border, taking their testimonies and hearing stories. Just realizing the drastic and devastating nature of our immigration policies and their impact on people and really turning the border into what felt like a war zone, but there was no war. These people were displaced and uprooted and homeless because of deliberate U.S. policies.
AMY GOODMAN: Aviva Chomsky, we want to thank you for being with us. A new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal." She is a professor at Salem State College — Salem State University in Massachusetts. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we continue our discussion about reparations in America. Stay with us.
Headlines:
•Snowden: NSA’s Release of Correspondence "Incomplete"
The National Security Agency has released an email sent by Edward Snowden to its Office of General Counsel last year, claiming it is the only email Snowden sent to supervisors before leaking documents on agency spying. In the email, Snowden raised questions about whether executive orders supersede federal laws. The release came after Snowden told NBC’s Brian Williams he had raised concerns through multiple channels.
Edward Snowden: "The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now, to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks, from me, raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of its legal authorities. Now I had raised these concerns not just officially in writing through email to these offices and individuals, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office ... and the response more or less in bureaucratic language was, 'you should stop asking questions.'"
Snowden told The Washington Post his correspondence extended far beyond the single email released by the NSA. He urged the White House to "require the NSA to ask my former colleagues, management, and the senior leadership team about whether I, at any time, raised concerns about the NSA’s improper and at times unconstitutional surveillance activities. It will not take long to receive an answer."
•Russia, Ukraine Meet over Gas Spat; Rebels Down Army Helicopter
In Ukraine, newly elected President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to take action against pro-Russian rebels who shot down a Ukrainian army helicopter near the eastern city of Slovyansk, killing 14 soldiers. The army has been seeking to oust the rebels from eastern areas where they have taken control. The tensions come as representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the European Union meet in Berlin today to address a gas dispute. Russia has threatened to cut off the gas supply to Ukraine if it fails to make a payment by Monday. A third of Europe’s gas comes from Russia; about half that supply passes through Ukraine.
•Egypt: Sabahi Concedes Election, Questions Turnout Claims
In Egypt, presidential candidate Hamdeen Sabahi has conceded the race to former military general Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a coup last year. Officials said 47 percent of eligible voters participated in the election, which saw Sisi take 95 percent of votes. Sabahi, Sisi’s only opponent, questioned the claims on turnout.
Hamdeen Sabahi: "The democratic scene in these elections was hit by many violations, breaches and loss of neutrality. I’m saying this with a responsible conscience through loving his country, a son of this country and a man who loves the (Egyptian) people, that we cannot give any credibility or belief to the numbers announced regarding the participation."
International election observers agreed Egypt’s election had failed to meet democratic standards, citing an environment of repression by the military-backed regime.
•Report: CIA Drone Strikes in Pakistan Winding Down
The CIA’s drone program in Pakistan is reportedly winding down, with no strikes reported there since December. The Associated Press cites unnamed U.S. officials who attribute the pause to a range of factors, including new rules to prevent civilian casualties and the deaths of top al-Qaeda figures. Drones in Pakistan are flown from bases that would be closed under Obama’s newly announced plan to pull nearly all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2016. But for now, the drones are still flying over Pakistan.
•Argentina Reaches Deal to Repay Debts Without IMF Involvement
Argentina has reached a landmark deal with a group of creditor nations to repay its longstanding debt without the involvement of the International Monetary Fund. Argentina is still trying to recover from a massive economic crisis and default more than a decade ago, which followed years of neoliberal reforms backed by the IMF and World Bank. Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchener hailed the deal to pay the Paris Club $9.7 billion.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchener: "It’s the first time in the history of the Paris Club that a country in our conditions has negotiated with a multilateral body without the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, and without giving up the autonomy that a sovereign country should have, and which reveals to us that when we’re allowed to grow, when we’re allowed to develop our own policies, that when we’re allowed to generate jobs and employment, the conditions exist to honor one’s commitments and take charge of its debt. We’re not, as the vultures say, serial debtors. They, the international financial capitalists, are serial predators not just on our economy but of many economies in the world."
Part of Argentina’s plan for economic recovery involves opening its vast shale reserves to foreign oil and gas firms.
•Review: VA Officials Falsified Records to Hide Veteran Patient Wait Times
Veterans Affairs Secterary Eric Shinseki is facing continued pressure to resign following more revelations of healthcare flaws. Shinseki defended himself before lawmakers Thursday a day after an inspector general’s review found VA officials across the system had falsified records to hide lengthy wait times for appointments. In one case reported by the Associated Press, a veteran in Arizona sought care for a skin lesion and was told it could take two years to see a dermatologist. When he sought outside care, he learned he had cancer.
•U.S. Sergeant Accused of Sexually Assaulting 12 Soldiers
A U.S. Army staff sergeant has been accused of sexually assaulting a dozen female soldiers over the past three years. The Washington Post reports Staff Sergeant Angel M. Sanchez could face a court-martial for allegedly using his position as a drill sergeant to threaten victims and, in one case, grabbing a female soldier by the hair and forcing her to perform oral sex. The Pentagon received more than 5,000 sexual assault reports last year, a 50 percent increase over the previous year.
•Speaker Boehner: "I’m Not Qualified to Debate the Science over Climate Change"
The Obama administration is set to unveil new regulations on coal-fired power plants Monday in a bid to address the top U.S. source of carbon that is fueling global warming. Congressional Republicans have criticized the rules. House Speaker Boehner responded to a reporter’s question about climate change on Thursday.
House Speaker John Boehner: "Listen, I’m not qualified to debate the science over climate change. But I am astute enough to understand that every proposal that has come out of this administration to deal with climate change involves hurting our economy and killing American jobs. That can’t be the prescription for dealing with changes in our climate."
•Greenpeace Ship Blocks Arctic Oil Drilling; Total SA Halts Oil Sands Project in Alberta
In environmental news, Greenpeace says its ship "Esperanza" or "Hope" is blocking the arrival of a an oil rig in the Arctic by occupying the area where the company Statoil is seeking to drill the "world’s northernmost well." On Thursday, Norwegian authorities removed a group of Greenpeace activists who had occupied the oil rig for two days. Meanwhile in Canada, the French company Total SA has halted an $11 billion tar sands oil mine project in Alberta, citing high costs.
•Texas AG Allows Secrecy of Execution Drugs in Reversal of Stance
In Texas, Attorney General Greg Abbott has said the state can conceal the source of execution drugs, marking a reversal of his previous stance. Officials in a number of states have hidden the names of lightly regulated compounding pharmacies which are supplying the drugs, and a botched execution in Oklahoma last month involved drugs from a secret source. Texans for Public Justice note that ahead of his decision, Attorney General Abbott received $350,000 in campaign donations from the owner of a compounding pharmacy to help him defeat Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis in the race for Texas governor. While that facility is not believed to be the state’s source for lethal drugs, the owner, Richie Ray, leads an industry PAC and is part of a trade group that has sold materials for execution drugs.
•Report: Severity of Violence Against LGBTPeople Increased
A new report says the severity of violence against LGBT people increased last year. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs recorded more than 2,000 late incidents in 2013, about the same number as the previous year. There were 18 anti-LGBT homicides in 2013, including three in New York City alone -– 89 percent of the murder victims were people of color; 72 percent were transgender women.
•Obama Addresses Concussions in Youth Sports
President Obama has called for improved research and protocols to address concussions in youth sports. Speaking at a White House summit on the issue, Obama said he likely suffered a concussion when he was young.
President Obama: "Before the awareness was out there, when I was young and played football briefly, there were a couple of times where I’m sure that that ringing sensation in my head and the need to sit down for a while might have been a mild concussion, and at the time you didn’t think anything of it. The awareness is improved today, but not by much. So the total number of young people who are impacted by this early on is probably bigger than we know."
•Autopsy: Homeless Man Killed by Albuquerque Police Shot in Back
In New Mexico, an autopsy report shows a homeless man killed by Albuquerque Police at a campsite was shot in the back. The shooting of James Boyd sparked protests and a federal investigation after police helmet cam video showed Boyd apparently surrendering before police opened fire. Boyd was shot three times –- in the lower back, and in each of his upper arms. Last month the Justice Department found most fatal shootings by Albuquerque police were unconstitutional. Since the review’s release, Albuquerque police have fatally shot three more people.
•Donald Sterling’s Wife Reaches Deal to Sell Clippers
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has reached a deal to buy the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team for a record $2 billion after owner Donald Sterling was banned from the NBA for making racist comments. Sterling’s estranged wife reached the deal with Ballmer, which now goes to the league for approval.
•Report: Christie Staff Received Pay Raises Despite Budget Shortfalls
In New Jersey, the Bergen Record newspaper reports nearly all state employees tasked with honing and promoting the image of Republican Gov. Chris Christie have received pay raises averaging 23 percent in recent months, despite budget shortfalls. Some of the workers who received the biggest pay boosts had left state government to work on Christie’s reelection campaign, then returned to higher salaries and new titles. Christie, meanwhile, has withheld more than $2.4 billion in payments to New Jersey’s pension fund amid revenue woes. He is considered a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
•Texas Prisoner Says She Gave Birth in Solitary, Baby Died
A Texas prisoner has filed a lawsuit against Wichita County, saying her baby died after she was forced to give birth in solitary confinement without medical care. Nicole Guerrero went into labor while being held on a drug possession charge in 2012. She says a nurse ignored her pleas for help and did not attempt to revive her baby after she was born with the umblical cord wrapped around her neck. According to the Wichita Times Record, the nurse’s license expired months before the incident.
-------
No comments:
Post a Comment